UAE. Mediastow, the leading media intelligence agency in MENA region, has released its 2011 Media Report on Sudan that monitored prominent newspapers in the Arab world to gauge the perception of the Arab media of Sudan as a country and the way they report its news.

The summary of the report, which covered Arab print media in Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Qatar and the UAE, dwells on the political environment in Sudan marked by comprehensive peace agreements and ending in the partition agreement.

Mo Elzubeir, CEO, Mediastow said: “This report provides a clear insight into how the Arab media perceives Sudan as a country. We have also measured the friendliness index of Arab media on Sudan. The report reveals that Qatar and Bahrain have a friendly approach to Sudanese issues; for every 1.27 negative articles, we got one positive article in Qatar while in Bahrain there are 2.8 negative articles for every one positive article. Newspapers in UAE, Kuwait, Egypt and KSA discussed Sudanese issues neutrally, as reflected in one positive article for every 3.5 in UAE, 4.1 in Kuwait, 4.25 in Egypt and 4.6 in Saudi Arabia.”

On the other hand, print media in Jordan, Oman and Lebanon dealt with Sudanese issues aggressively, as reflected in one positive clipping for every 6.2 clippings in Jordan, 10.1 in Oman and 15.6 in Lebanon.

The media report monitored, analysed and classified 18,000 clippings from newspapers and magazines in the Arab countries mentioned above, to provide a comprehensive picture of Sudan’s visibility in the Arab media in 2011.

The report says that the political mentions took a significant lead in 2011 with 12,831 clippings, while  social mentions were almost totally absent, having an average of less than half an article in a month in almost all the countries covered by report.

General coverage consisting of 347 clippings featured a variety of positive, neutral and negative topics, such as economic factors (droughts and inflation) and their impact on the people’s life and mentions on public discontent and food aid.

The report points out that there was a considerable amount of positive general coverage for forums and events, while business mentions reached 1,617 clippings that varied between positive and negative, covering deals, projects, new productions and bilateral cooperation with other countries.

Currency wars, business impact of tensions, plummeting of the pound and shortening of the sugar supply were the dominant negative business topics of the year according to the Mediastow 2011 report.

The full report is available here.

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